RARE PRESENTATION/ASSOCIATION COPY OF TRAIT POUR TRAIT, WARMLY INSCRIBED BY CARTIER-BRESSON TO LONGTIME FRIEND, PHOTOJOURNALIST PETER TURNLEY

(CARTIER-BRESSON, Henri). Trait pour trait. Les dessins d’Henri Cartier-Bresson. [Line by Line. The Drawings of Henri Cartier-Bresson]. (Paris): Arthaud, (1989). Square quarto, original tan cloth, original dust jacket. $5500.

First edition of the first volume of drawings by Cartier-Bresson, a rare association copy evocatively inscribed on the half title to his close friend, award-winning photographer Peter Turnley , “a Peter et Amie, des photos au ralenti et salutations a toute vitesse, Henri Cartier etc…,” (To Peter and Amie, of photographs in time slowed down and salutations at full speed), with 65 photogravure plates of Cartier-Bresson’s drawings, including nine in color.

Henri Cartier-Bresson was “a profoundly optimistic visionary… [whose] search for the ‘decisive moment’ was a search for the harmony and balance manifested in all events” (Roth, 20). Yet this photographer who changed the history of 20th-century photography “was far more than a gifted journalist… His first love was drawing and painting.” Cartier-Bresson drew his first inspiration from the paintings of Seurat, Degas and Toulouse-Lautrec and in 1927 studied painting with André Lhote, who Cartier-Bresson credited “with teaching him ‘everything I know about photography… Many people have pondered the split between Cartier-Bresson’s photographs, with their instantaneity, and his later drawings, with the hesitant, even painstaking lines. The link between them involved a belief in strict discipline and order, traceable to Lhote” (New York Times). The influence of these artists, evidenced in this beautifully produced book of drawings, is further seen in the book’s dedication to Tériade, who was the highly regarded publisher “of books by Matisse and other major artists of the School of Paris” and published Cartier-Bresson’s first photobooks (Parr & Badger I:189). First edition of Trait pour trait published in conjunction with the 1989 exhibit of Cartier-Bresson’s drawings and paintings at Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris. With introduction by Jean Clair; preface by John Russell; graphic design by Robert Delpire. Text in French. This copy with a lovely, poetic inscription made by Cartier-Bresson to fellow photographer Peter Turnley and his wife on February 3, 2000, when Turnley visited the photographer in his Paris apartment. Cartier-Bresson had a profound influence over Turnley’s impressive career as a photojournalist for Life, Newsweek and as a contributing editor for Harper’s Magazine, covering “almost every important international news event of the last 15 years” (New York Times).

A rare association copy, in fine condition.